


party favors

by autoheart



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 10:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14042346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoheart/pseuds/autoheart
Summary: Merlin likes Arthur and hates parties, and somehow, he always ends up at Arthur's parties, feeling bitter and neglected the entire night.(dumb fluff, dialogue-heavy.)





	party favors

It was decidedly too cold to make the patio a viable hangout spot for the party goers. This, Merlin supposed, was exactly why he found himself there. He remembered his coat, discarded thoughtlessly on Arthur’s bed and now held hostage by Gwaine and a girl who he did not recognize, with an intense pang of longing. Merlin tried to ignore how pleased it made him to think that Arthur, at least, would not be able to use it himself and that somehow made up for having to stand out on the patio, where it was a brisk nine degrees centigrade, with no coat.

Merlin leaned against one of the beams that supported the deck and looked up into the night sky. It was a cloudy night, nothing to be seen but the moon surrounded by an almost spooky halo of fog. Merlin took a sip of his juice, jumping as a crash followed by a series of hollers sounded behind him. He sighed, and only hoped it wasn't the television. He wouldn’t be able to bear Arthur tomorrow if he was hungover and griping on about a broken TV. He loved that TV more than he loved his sister, always prattling on about resolution and other things Merlin couldn’t be arsed about. He just nodded with mock-enthusiasm when Arthur asked him to confirm how “clear the picture was,” like some middle-aged dad in the 1950s.

Not for the first time that night, Merlin wished he felt like drinking. Normally, he would have. Parties weren’t his strong suit, and they were even less so when it he was stone cold sober. He was in a mood. An Arthur mood. To be fair, he was always in an Arthur mood, but this one was one of the sad ones. Arthur was so _good_ at parties. He knew how to make conversation, he knew how to host, he knew how to make each person feel like they had some profound interaction with him by the time they left. Well, everyone but Merlin, but Merlin hardly ever left. The long and short of it was Arthur knew how to perform. Merlin hated watching it all, watching Arthur smile and nod and say things like “wow, that’s crazy,” at just the right time to make it look like he was listening. He hated how, sometimes, Arthur would catch Merlin’s eye from across the room and wink at him, like they were sharing some joke, even though Arthur barely spoke to Merlin at these things. The wink was usually what drove him from casual drinking to guzzling down whatever he could get his hands on. But tonight, he wasn’t drinking, and there had been no wink.

Merlin winced as he heard another crash from inside, and a voice- Morgana’s- yell “Put it on my tab, Pendragon, it’s just a bloody fucking cookie jar.”

Merlin groaned. The cookie jar was worse than a broken TV ever could have been, only he wouldn’t mind Arthur complaining about this one. Given its sentimental value and Arthur’s tendency to clam up at any real expression of emotion, Merlin doubted he would ever hear a single word about it. It was an old ceramic job shaped like a fairy. It had been his grandmother’s and then his mother’s, and now it was his, and he loved it, despite how strange it looked in a house full of college footie players. Morgana either didn’t know or was drunk enough to have forgotten. Otherwise, she would have never said something so callous. Arthur didn’t talk about his mum much, seeing as she passed before Arthur could remember, but anyone who knew him know that it bothered him more than he let on. Merlin would get up early tomorrow and see if he couldn’t glue it back together before Arthur woke up.

 

Merlin tensed as he heard the screen door to the patio squeak open, his hiding place discovered.

 

“Merlin, thank fuck, I’ve been looking for you forever,” Arthur’s voice, the definition of relief, melted the tension from Merlin’s shoulders.“Save me; they’re breaking my whole house.”

“I heard. You alright?” Merlin asked, not turning to face his friend, instead taking a sip of his drink. He suspected Arthur had come out here for privacy, and he intended to lend him some.

“Yeah,” Arthur confirmed, coming to stand at Merlin’s side, his shoulder pressing against Merlin’s, a classic Pendragon lack of regard for personal space.

“I think I can fix it,” Merlin continued.

“You’ve not seen it,” Arthur huffed.

Merlin turned to smile at Arthur. “I didn’t say I _could,_ only that I _thought_ I could, and it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Arthur smiled back, nudging Merlin’s shoulder with his, but his eyes looked a bit waterier than usual, and Merlin realized that the great, tough Arthur Pendragon had been on the verge of tears.

Arthur seemed to know he was being studied, and that he had been found out, judging by how quickly he turned away.

“What are you doing out here, anyway, _Mer_ lin?”

“It was getting a bit too-” Merlin waved his hand in a gesture of vague distaste.

“Don’t these things always get that way?” Arthur laughed. “You’re mental to be out here without a coat,” he added, tugging at the sleeve of Merlin’s henley for emphasis.

Merlin rolled his eyes.

“And you’re mental to be out here in a football jersey. At least mine has proper long sleeves. Anyway,” Merlin sighed, “my coat is on your bed and Gwaine-”

“On my bed??” Arthur groaned.

“On _my_ coat,” Merlin confirmed.

Arthur took Merlin’s drink and took a long swig before handing it back, confused.

“That’s just juice,” he stated, eyeing Merlin with suspicion. “Merlin, are you _sober_?”

Merlin shrugged. He had never been caught sober at a party before. He wasn’t sure what the consequence was.

“You’re usually the most pissed by now,” Arthur continued.

“I just didn’t feel like it, I guess,” Merlin said, finally.

“Well, as much as I do look forward to sappy, drunk Merlin at the end of the night, it’s nice not to be the only one sober for a change,” Arthur replied.

“What do you mean “for a change?” You drink at parties all the time,” Merlin said. “I’ve seen you so drunk that you tried to bully me into body shots,” he pointed out, hoping the shiver that ran through him at the memory of Arthur ripping off his shirt and asking belly button or clavicle could be attributed to the cold.

“That was at _Morgana’s,”_ Arthur said. “I don’t drink at parties I am hosting, especially not when they’re this big.”

“Huh,” Merlin said, trying to recall all of the other Arthur parties to confirm whether or not Arthur had been as far gone as he had been, but most of his memories ended somewhere shortly post wink and resumed the next morning with him having commandeered Arthur’s bed and Arthur sleeping on the floor.

“And,” Arthur continued, “my sobriety is the reason I get to enjoy Sappy Drunk Merlin while you probably can’t even remember most of my parties.”

“Oi!” Merlin protested.

“Can you?” Arthur asked, his tone too knowing for Merlin’s liking.

“Well-- No,” Merlin admitted, reluctantly, scowling at the triumphant look on Arthur’s face.

 

“Did you need me for something?” Merlin changed the subject, looking away from Arthur. One of the side effects of a sad Arthur mood meant looking at him for too long hurt.

“No. Why?”

“You said you were looking for me?”

“Oh. No, I just wanted to know where you were. I was going to check out here first and then the bathrooms, and if I didn’t find you lying in a puddle of your own bodily fluids, I would have assumed you had answered some siren call into a bedroom,” Arthur shrugged, a bit too calculatedly nonchalant for Merlin accept as casual.

“I’ve never done that,” Merlin argued.

“Been sick all over my bathroom or disappeared into a bedroom, because there is a bathroom rug in a landfill somewhere that can never forget what you did to it, Emrys,” Arthur chastised, wagging a finger at Merlin.

“Disappeared into a bedroom, Arthur,” Merlin rolled his eyes. “Only someone completely off his rocker would shag someone they met at a Pendragon piss-up.”

“ _You’re_ at a Pendragon piss-up.”

“Exactly my point. Look at the riff-raff you let in here,” Merlin teased, gesturing to himself.

“Well,” Arthur began, his speech halting and far less confident than anything Merlin had ever heard come out of his mouth. “Given the example, one could say I do curate the party guests to my personal tas-”

 

The screen door clapped open, Lance and Gwen stumbling out, giggling.

“Oh, Arthur, sorry, mate,” Lance practically shouted once his glassy eyes landed on the two men standing in front of him. “Didn’t realize you’d already called dibs on the patio, have fun with-” Lance paused and looked wide-eyed at Merlin, then to Gwen, then at the space (or lack thereof) between Arthur and Merlin, then back to Merlin, his eyes coming finally to rest on Gwen once more.

“It’s happening,” Lance said in a voice that he had probably intended to be a whisper, and Gwen nodded, smiling and losing her balance a bit before turning to lead Lance back inside.

“Have fun!” Lance called over his shoulder.

“Shut up!” Gwen chided him and she tugged him through the threshold of the door.

“Use protec-”

“Fuck off!” Arthur called over Lance’s last statement, and Merlin turned back to find Arthur’s cheeks had gone pink.

“What did he mean ‘it’s happening?’ What’s happening? He’s totally pissed,” Merlin laughed, more than a bit uncomfortable.

“Yeah, totally pissed,” Arthur agreed with a little too much enthusiasm.

 

Merlin studied his face and decided the other boy’s face was too red to blame it entirely on the cold.

Arthur caught Merlin watching him.

“What?”

You’re blushing,” Merlin blurted before he could think better of it.

The color in Arthur’s cheeks impossibly deepened.

“What of it?”

“Well-- Why? It’s not like we’ve not seen Lance and Gwen do… whatever it is that Lance and Gwen do before,” Merlin replied, amused.

“You think I’m--? Because of Lance and? Did you not hear what Lance said? He thought you and I were-” he waved his hand back and forth between them.

“Oh, of course, yes, it was ever so clear that he thought we were-” Merlin mimicked the hand movement Arthur had made. “Now if you would be so kind as to tell me what that _means?”_

“Everyone thinks that we’re.. You know.”

 

Merlin was getting annoyed. He was half glad he was getting annoyed because the best way to get over a sad Arthur mood was with an annoyed one.

“God, you’re really this dense?”

“Yes! You should know, as you so constantly remind me!”

“You’re usually not, when it matters,” Arthur grumbled. “They think-- you’re killing me, Emrys-- they think that you and I are, you know, _intimate_ with one another.”

“Oh.”

There was a long pause.

“Like naked intimate?” Merlin asked, having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that _this_ was the conversation they were having. He was also worried that this was somehow his fault, what with all the staring he did at Arthur on the daily, but he could hardly help it when Arthur was so _Arthur_ all the time. And now he had gone and mucked it up, and people think they’re shagging and it clearly embarrassed Arthur.

“What other kind of intimate would I be referring to, _Mer_ lin?” Arthur huffed.

“Intimate concerts, intimate weddings, the intimates section in a department store,” Merlin listed, hoping Arthur didn’t notice the slight tremor in his voice. When he saw the other man wasn’t in the least bit amused, he continued. “Well, we aren’t. Being intimate, that is.”

“Of course not!” Arthur agreed.

“Why would they think that?” he asked, worried that the color in his face was beginning to match Arthur’s.

“Haven’t the foggiest.”

 

Merlin laughed, feeling a bit manic.

“As if _you_ would go for _me_ ,” Merlin added.

“As if _you_ would ever go for _me”_ Arthur retorted. “I don’t get why everyone-”

“Whose everyone?” Merlin interrupted, his stomach turning. Was he really so transparent that everyone knew? That Arthur knew?

“Gwen. Morgana. Lance. Gwaine. Percival. I heard Gwen talking to Morgana at the pub the other day when they thought I couldn’t hear. From what I’ve gathered, the girls have some bet against the guys concerning the two of us,” Arthur elaborated.

“How childish.”

“I know.”

“At least _some_ of us know how to behave like adults,” Merlin rambled.

“Right,” Arthur agreed.

“We’re talking about it, right now, like adults,” Merlin continued.

“Right,” Arthur repeated.

“Anyway, now we know why you can’t get a date,” Merlin said, willing himself to shut up even as the words left his lips. “Can hardly find someone when everyone thinks you’re in some secret relationship with me. We’ll just have to give each other some space for a few weeks, and all this will die-”

“No!” Arthur interjected, catching himself in his apparent panic, and repeating, his voice carefully leveled, “No.”

“No what?”

“No, we don’t need to give each other space, or I don’t want space if you don’t, that is,” Arthur rambled.

“But if we don’t, everyone will keep on saying that, you know” Merlin waved his hand in the motion that had come to stand for something they were both too afraid to put into words.

 

Arthur shrugged, his movements controlled, more deliberate than Merlin had seen him behave, at least when they were alone. This was a performance, the Arthur that was so good at social situations. This was not his Arthur. Merlin was so busy wondering why this Arthur had so suddenly appeared that he almost missed what the other boy said.

“I’m not really looking for a date,” Arthur said, looking away from Merlin and up at the moon. The fog was dissipating every so slightly, but the moon was still ringed eerily.

“Well maybe _I_ am,” Merlin replied.

He wasn’t. He really wasn’t. But he couldn’t bear the jokes he would notice now that he was looking or them, about him and Arthur actually being, well, _him and Arthur._ He needed this to be fixed.

“As I said, if you want space, _Mer_ lin,” Arthur rolled his eyes. “Just say the word, and you’ll have it.”

Arthur gave Merlin a sidelong glance, and although the heat in Arthur’s cheeks had cooled and his face appeared unbothered, there was something in his eyes that was pleading. Pleading Merlin not to accept the offer he had extended to him.

 

Merlin sighed, frustrated.

“Does that mean “Yes, Arthur, leave me alone a while?’” Arthur asked, carefully.

“No, that’s an “I just don’t get you, Arthur” sigh. I’d’ve hoped you would be better at reading my mind by now,” Merlin said, a half-hearted joke.

“I wish I were. What’s not to get?” Arthur asked, turning back to face Merlin again.

“You’re all blushy when Gwen and Lance allude to us, you know,” Merlin began, asking himself why the hell they didn’t drop it, why he didn’t want to drop it, and why Arthur didn’t seem to want to either, but he continued on anyway, as it seemed the only thing _to_ do. “Which means you’re embarrassed by it, but when I offer you a way to end your embarrassment, you act like it isn’t a huge deal. You’re giving me whiplash.”

“I’m not embarrassed that they said it, Merlin,” Arthur replied slowly.

“But you _are_ embarrassed,” Merlin answered.

“That they said it in front of you, yes” Arthur clarified.

“What does it matter if they’ve said it in front of me if they’re going to say it anyway?”

“Because I thought you’d freak out if you heard, which you kind of are, and then you’d start analyzing what about us makes people assume that, which you are, and then to change it, so people don’t think that of us anymore, which you’re trying to do,” Arthur explained. “I like the way we are,” he added, his voice softer.

“I do, too,” Merlin agreed, but felt no less confused. “But doesn’t it bother you that they’re all probably in there right now, all those girls that have been chatting you up all night and your football friends and all our best mates, and they’re all making jokes about how we’re, I don’t know, fawning all over each other and whispering sweet nothings or whatever they think we do?”

“Not at all,” Arthur said.

 

It was too much. Arthur had no idea that those three words were tearing Merlin up with how happy they threatened to make him, if he only let them.

“Arthur,” Merlin pleaded, although he wasn’t quite sure what he was pleading for. “Why? Why _wouldn’t_ you mind?”

 

Arthur studied him briefly and took a deep breath.

 

“Maybe I wish they were right.”

“I’m sorry?” Merlin gasped.

“Forget I said anything,” Arthur amended without missing a beat.

“No, no, no, you said it,” Merlin sputtered, his mouth beginning to taste a bit like iron. His heart was pounding in his chest.

“Listen, this doesn’t change anything, Merlin, you’re my best friend before you're anything else, and that’s all I ask for. That’s all I need,” Arthur said, a damage control speech that felt rehearsed.  

“Sh. No. Listen to me,” Merlin continued in his disjointed panic.

“I’m listening, Merlin,” he said, his words clipped.

“You?” was all Merlin could manage.

“Me?” Arthur parroted Merlin’s tone, clearly entering the defensive. Merlin needed to gather his thoughts before Arthur completely shut down.

“Arthur. Arthur, are you joking? _You_ feeling, you know, about _me?_ You won’t even share a bed with me! How could you feel like that if you’re scared to even be near me?”

“You think I’m scared to be near you? Merlin! You’re an idiot!”

“I’m sure you’re right, but why?”

“I don’t sleep in the same bed as you because when the opportunity arises, you’re usually drunk! And I told you, you’re a sappy drunk. You say these terrible things when you’re shit faced, Merlin, absolutely awful things. ‘Your shoulders are so nice, Arthur, you have such pretty eyes, Arthur.’ Not to mention the fact that you turn into a damned octopus with all the touching you do. You’re all over me, and god forbid you get it in your mind that you want to kiss someone and I’m the only one there to act as the victim. And as much as I bloody want to let you kiss me, I know you’re drunker than God, and I’d at least like you to remember when it’s over. And for you to have actually wanted to kiss _me_ instead of whoever has the first set of lips available,” Arthur finished, out of breath.

“I’m the idiot? I’m the idiot,” Merlin muttered to himself, shaking his head.

“So, that’s why,” Arthur continued, “I sleep on the floor, because I felt creepy letting you unwittingly crawl all over a man that wants to jump you.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Merlin began, wincing at how high pitched his own voice sounded with nervousness, “that sometimes drunk people say and do things they aren’t brave enough to do when they’re sober?”

“Well, yes, but-” Arthur stuttered, trailing off.

“I’m not saying you should have let me do whatever I was trying to do to you, and I appreciate the concern, but you could have, I don’t know, brought it up later?” Merlin finished.

“What would you have said? Had I brought it up?” Arthur asked, looking at Merlin hopefully.

“I would have denied ever doing any such thing,” Merlin replied lightly, watching Arthur’s face fall. “And then I would have gone home and brooded over whether or not you know that I felt, you know, about you.”

“Felt how?”

“You _know.”_

“Maybe, but I don’t know if I am sure,” Arthur disagreed, a ghost of his most vexing smile on his lips.

“Well, like how they think I feel,” Merlin said, motioning towards the house.

“What? That you’d like to get to know me? _Intimately?”_ Arthur smiled, stepping closer to Merlin.

“No! Well, not just that,” Merlin protested, eyeing Arthur as he came ever closer.

“But you are saying that you really think I have nice shoulders?”

“Well, yes, but anyone with eyes thinks that.”

“And my eyes? What about them?”

“They’re alright,” Merlin breathed.

 

Arthur was now standing directly in front of Merlin, which felt closer and more dangerous than he had ever felt all the hours they had spent in their friendship with their shoulders pressed flushed together.

“And you really want to kiss me.” Arthur said, more statement than question, searching Merlin’s eyes as he spoke.

 

Merlin looked back, hesitating. The answer was always, unerringly yes, but he couldn’t get the word past his lips. He could see Arthur’s confidence, so recently regained, falter in the glimmer of his eye. Still, Merlin’s silence wore on. Arthur’s face fell entirely and he stepped back, widening the space between them. Merlin’s mind screamed at him to do something. Any chance at normalcy had slipped through his fingers the moment Arthur had stepped out onto the patio that night. Now all that was left was to choose which way he wanted to turn. There was the path that led inevitably and quite permanently away from Arthur, and the other, which brought him closer. One, when he thought about it, wasn’t really a choice to begin with.

 

He stepped forward and grabbed Arthur’s arm, letting the momentum of the action carry him closer to the other boy than he had intended. In a moment of mad courage, Merlin let his mouth crash into Arthur’s, the kiss about as graceful as the conversation had been.

Arthur grunted in surprise, and quite possibly pain, but didn’t move away, his hands finding purchase in Merlin’s belt loops.

There was a whoop from the house, and drunken call of “Get it, Emrys!”, but the culprits were gone from sight by the time the boys had turned to look.

Merlin felt his cheeks burning has he desperately surveyed all the windows in hopes of spotting any spies that still might be lurking.

Arthur nosed at his cheek, the icy cold of his skin shocking Merlin out of his search.

“Don’t stop. You heard them. Get it, Emrys,” Arthur repeated, kissing Merlin’s cheek.

“You’re freezing. We should go in,” Merlin argued, letting Arthur turn his face back towards him and kiss him again, this one much nicer (and less painful) than the first.

“I’ll warm you up,” Arthur said, his voice low.

There was another whoop from inside.

“Very cute, but I can’t feel my hands and I want to go in,” Merlin laughed, slipping one of his hands under Arthur’s shirt as proof, making the other boy hiss and draw back.

“Ok, ok, we’ll go in. But I think tonight is the night you start disappearing into bedrooms at parties, Merlin.”

“You think so?”

“I guarantee it.”

 


End file.
